Central America Eyeing a Dialogue

By Jill Smolowe

Something was in the air. Earlier in the week, posters tacked on Managua telephone poles had declared: NO TO A DIALOGUE WITH THE CONTRAS. By Wednesday, however, the signs had been ripped down, and squawking radios urged Nicaraguans to support peace efforts in Central America. But the 50,000 people who jammed Managua's Revolution Plaza on Thursday night got more than they had bargained for. An exhausted President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, just returned from Moscow, announced that his Sandinista government would make three concessions to demonstrate Nicaragua's "firm will to contribute to regional peace."

First came the easy news: 981 prisoners would be set free, none of them national guardsmen convicted of major crimes. Then the non-news: Nicaragua would declare a general amnesty and lift its state of emergency once the U.S. halted all aid to the contra rebels. Finally, the real news: the Sandinistas were willing to talk with the contras through an intermediary to negotiate a cease-fire.

The offer was a stunning reversal for the Sandinistas, who for years have dismissed the contras as "U.S. puppets" and rejected talks of any kind with rebel leaders. Ortega tried to downplay the shift by emphasizing that his proposal does not extend to political negotiations. Cease-fire talks, he said, will "unmask those who say they want peace but in reality want war." The concessions coincided with the first deadline of the peace plan championed by President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica and signed last August by five Central American Presidents. While the Reagan Administration countered Ortega's offer with a call for direct talks, contra leaders hailed the announcement as a "triumph for the resistance." After listening to Ortega's speech on radio in Costa Rica, they urged that Miguel Cardinal Obando y Bravo, Nicaragua's ranking churchman, be tapped to mediate the talks. The next day, Ortega visited the Cardinal's office and later emerged with Obando to announce that Obando had agreed to take the job. A date and place for the first meeting remain to be set.

Despite the diplomatic obstacles ahead, Nicaragua's overture promises to put fresh wind in the listless sails of Central America's peace process. While no one seriously believed an enduring peace would settle over the region on Nov. 5, as called for by the pact, Arias had repeatedly warned that negotiations were at an "impasse" that could be broken only if the Sandinistas yielded on the cease-fire talks. Though the Reagan Administration has never been happy with the accord, the proposal has so far survived, if only because no leader wants to be seen as the man who killed it.

That much was clear as the initial cease-fire deadline came and went last week without anyone proclaiming the plan a failure. During separate trips to / the U.S. last month, Ortega and Honduran President Jose Azcona Hoyo had warned that they would no longer feel bound by the accord if cease-fires, amnesties, cut-offs of foreign aid to rebels, and other goals were not achieved on schedule. Yet both men remained committed to the proposal, even as rebel violence continued in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. The White House had planned to use the failed deadline to push for $270 million in new contra aid. But with a congressional defeat looming, the Administration decided to seek only $30 million in nonlethal aid, to tide the contras over at least through mid-January.

The peace framework may yet buckle under the weight of details. A central concern is whether Nicaragua's Marxist-oriented comandantes will honor their commitments to democratic reform and peaceful coexistence with their neighbors, or are merely making temporary moves to ensure the destruction of the contras. Since the signing of the accord, Nicaragua has taken several small steps, among them reopening the opposition daily La Prensa and Radio Catolica, inviting three exiled priests to return home and beginning talks with Nicaragua's opposition parties. But, warns an Arias aide, "we see all kinds of indications that Ortega would like to wriggle out of his commitments."

Already the Nicaraguan government has rolled back some of its reforms. Two weeks ago a popular visitation program with Costa Rica was suspended after 1,200 Nicaraguans failed to come back. (Last week Honduras suspended a similar program with Nicaragua but offered no explanation.) The Sandinistas then canceled scheduled talks with Miskito Indian rebels from eastern Nicaragua and confiscated opposition posters. Last week Ortega called off the Sandinistas' unilateral cease-fires in four war zones, plainly hoping to appease hard- liners within his own government, who oppose even indirect talks with the rebels. "The contras did not respect that cease-fire," he shouted in Revolution Plaza, shaking his fist. "We are going to go after them tooth and nail."

Contras inside Nicaragua admit they have been using the cease-fire zones for resupply operations. Ironically, as even some of the rebels' strongest supporters reluctantly conclude the contra effort is doomed -- an opinion seemingly shared by many of the civilian contra leaders -- the estimated 12,000 rebel soldiers are finally beginning to look like a fighting force. Armed with U.S. Redeye missiles, the contras claim to have shot down more than 20 Sandinista helicopters this year, and are now stepping up attacks in the northern provinces. A sympathetic expatriate community in Miami still believes the contras could win the war if U.S. funding continues, a prospect that it admits is dim. "There will be a lot of bitter Nicaraguans in Miami," warns Jaime Suchlicki, the Cuban-born director of the University of Miami's Institute of Interamerican Studies. "Who would trust the U.S. after this?"

The Reagan Administration has been all but squeezed out of a debate that it once dominated. The White House has grave reservations about the peace pact's ability to restrict Soviet-bloc aid to Nicaragua or evict Cuban and Soviet advisers from Nicaraguan soil. But Reagan has been unable to effectively press his case for tougher security measures. "The more Washington opposes Arias, the more prestige Arias gains," says Arturo Cruz, a former contra leader. Upstaged by Arias, sidelined by even staunch allies in Honduras and El Salvador, Reagan is finding that he has little sway over Central America's agenda. Says a State Department official: "We're very much the caboose on this one."

The White House is still suffering from its gaffe last August, when it hastily cobbled together a peace plan with House Speaker Jim Wright. The more stringent plan was unveiled as the Central American Presidents were convening in Guatemala City, and the White House expected it to supplant the less demanding Arias initiative. Instead, the plan produced two unexpected consequences: the Central Americans took offense at the gringo meddling, and U.S. allies in the region interpreted the White House scheme to mean that Washington was ready for peace. Three days later, against all predictions, the Central Americans signed the homegrown pact. Wright rushed to embrace Arias' effort, and the Reagan-Wright plan crumbled.

The White House also misjudged how the fitful peace process was playing both at home and abroad. As Ortega made his concessions, the U.S. Administration kept up a fretful patter, denouncing Sandinista compromises as "cosmetic" and the plan as "fatally flawed." That strategy continued last week, when a State Department official dismissed the pending pardon of the 981 prisoners as a "pitiful number compared to the more than 9,000 that remain," and another department official called Ortega's bid for indirect talks with the contras "mostly cosmetic." Says an aide to Arias: "Reagan & has done something I thought impossible: he has aroused sympathy for Daniel Ortega."

The Administration has come across as intransigent at a time when it would be better served by flexibility. Reagan's claims of support for the peace process have been undermined by his dramatic pledges to support the "freedom fighters" no matter what the outcome of the Arias plan. Says Viron Vaky, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs during the Carter years: "The U.S. is loath to negotiate anything but the terms of the Sandinistas' surrender." Some Administration officials now admit as much. "Our policy toward Nicaragua is nothing more than support for the contras," says a senior official. "Without the contras -- and they'll be gone before you know it -- we have no policy. That's the pathetic truth."

If Reagan does attempt to push his $270 million contra-aid package early next year, Congressmen from both parties doubt that the bill will pass. "Most of us don't want to get in the way ((of the peace talks)) right now," explains Democratic Representative Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma. That sentiment, however, does not faze some at the White House. "At the very least, we'll make everyone stand up and be counted," says an Administration official. "There will be a clear record of who abandoned the contras, who made U.S. military involvement more likely."

Even if the White House decides to abandon the contras, the Guatemala accord is not assured of success. With the exception of Costa Rica, each of the participating countries still has much to accomplish. In El Salvador talks between the government and guerrillas have been stalled since the slaying of a human-rights activist two weeks ago. Last week President Jose Napoleon Duarte proclaimed a unilateral cease-fire. His detractors suggest that the move is designed to invite violations so that Duarte can claim he tried his best, then order up an army offensive. Less than 48 hours after Duarte's announcement, fighting erupted in the northern province of Chalatenango.

Honduras' Azcona vows that he will not expel contras from Honduran territory until the Sandinistas negotiate a cease-fire with the rebels. In Guatemala the first talks between the government and guerrillas in 25 years have broken down; 16 more lives were taken last week. In Nicaragua the Sandinistas have headaches that go beyond the plan. Last week it was learned that Defense Minister Humberto Ortega's top aide, Major Roger Miranda ^ Bengoechea, had defected to the U.S. Ortega denounced his aide as a "traitorous worm" and said he had decamped because he was passed over for a promotion last July.

Still, the wobbly peace process has survived its first hurdle. This week foreign ministers will convene for a meeting of the Organization of American States in Washington. Ortega is expected to attend to promote the peace plan and underscore Nicaragua's compliance. The next significant deadline comes two months from now, when the Central American Presidents are supposed to meet again to assess where the plan has been and where it is going. Some in the Reagan Administration are wagering that by then the peace process will be moribund and the quest for additional contra funding will look less quixotic.

More likely, the results will be as mixed as they are now. If the leaders of Central America can accomplish more than just setting new deadlines -- and if Ortega eventually engages the contras across a negotiating table instead of a battlefield -- the peace dream may seem less impossible.

With reporting by Ricardo Chavira/Washington and John Moody/Managua